Sand Creek Massacre: Colorado's land
grab from Native tribes
On the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre, Colorado admits the eastern half of the state was
built on the coerced cession of the Arapaho and Cheyenne homelands.
By Gregory Hobbs
DENVER POST 11/22/2014
A wood engraving published in an 1868 edition of Harper's Weekly shows the Seventh U.S. Cavalry under Col. Custer
charging into Black Kettle's village at Washita subsequent to Col. Chivington’s 1864 Sand Creek attack. (Library of
Congress)
Cheyenne chief War Bonnet, pictured during a visit to President Abraham Lincoln, was slain at Sand Creek in 1864. (Library
of Congress)
In this 150th year since the Sand Creek Massacre, Colorado has made to the Arapaho and
Cheyenne tribes and, in particular, to the descendants of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, an
incalculably important admission: The non-Native settlement of the eastern half of
Colorado became possible through the coerced cession of Arapaho and Cheyenne
homelands.
In Worcester vs. Georgia (1832), Chief Justice John Marshall recognized that title to lands
in possession of Native people can pass to non-Native people only through the cession of
those lands by the Indian tribes to the United States and, thence, under the laws of the
United States to those residing in a state or territory. "The treaties and laws of the United
States contemplate the Indian territory as completely separated from that of the states, and
provide that all intercourse with them shall be carried on exclusively by the government of
the union."
Native people were in possession of all lands from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast of
what subsequently became the continental United States. The land that now comprises the
state of Colorado came into the United States through the 1803 Louisiana Purchase with
France and the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico. In fact, an 1845 Fremont
map plainly shows that the Arapaho and Cheyenne possessed the eastern half of what is now
Colorado. As of 1845, all lands south of the Arkansas River through the San Luis Valley and
west of the Continental Divide to California were claimed by Mexico.
Colorado Territory came into being in February 1861 at the outset of the Civil War. The
Union Congress carved it out of the territories of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico
and Utah to take into one territory the whole of the Continental Divide's mineral-bearing
area running through the heart of the Rocky Mountains from Wyoming to New Mexico.
The 1864 Sand Creek Massacre was the pivotal event in the ultimate removal of the Arapaho
and Cheyenne people from eastern Colorado. The 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty had guaranteed
possession of the lands from the North Platte River in the territory of Wyoming to the
territory of New Mexico south of the Arkansas River.
Following the 1858 discovery of gold in western Kansas Territory, non-Natives rushed onto
the Arapaho and Cheyenne lands comprising the High Plains and the eastern slope of what
became Colorado Territory. Just prior to the creation of Colorado Territory, the United
States also in February 1861 had negotiated the Treaty of Fort Wise with some of the
Arapaho and Cheyenne chiefs.
Camp Weld meeting of 1864 prior to the Sand Creek Massacre when Black Kettle of the Cheyenne and Left Hand of the
Arapaho went to Denver seeking assurance from Governor Evans that they wanted peace and were told to go to southeast
Colorado, where the troops Chivington led attacked them. (Photos from Denver Public Library, Western History and
Genealogy Collection)
This treaty shrunk the Cheyenne and Arapaho lands to a reservation in southeastern
Colorado. The 1862 Homestead Act passed by the Union Congress made possible the
conveyance of ceded Indian land to non-Native persons.
A peaceful village led by Left Hand of the Arapaho and Black Kettle of the Cheyenne, along
with other peace chiefs of both tribes, encamped at the reservation under the direction of
Colorado's territorial governor, John Evans, who also served as superintendent of Indian
Affairs for the territory.
On Nov. 29, 1864, Colorado Cavalry volunteers serving 100-day enlistments in the U.S.
Army under the command of Colonel John Chivington of the Colorado Territory ravaged
these people.
This year, Gov. John Hickenlooper's executive order creating the Sand Creek Massacre
Commemoration Commission admits the facts of this horrendous wrong. "On November 29,
1864, approximately 675 United States soldiers killed more than 200 Cheyenne and
Arapaho villagers who were living peacefully near Fort Lyon, Colorado, a place where
American negotiators had assured they would be safe. Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle's village
had raised a U.S. flag as symbols of peace, but Colonel John Chivington ignored the banners
and ordered his troops to take no prisoners.
"Ambushed and outnumbered, the Cheyenne and Arapaho villagers fled on foot to the
bottom of the dry stream bed. After eight hours, the shooting finally stopped and the village
was pillaged and set ablaze. Most of the dead were women, children, and elderly men. The
few survivors sought safety in neighboring camps, but the descendants' lives were forever
changed. The Sand Creek Massacre deeply impacts the sovereign tribal nations whose
ancestors were massacred that tragic day, and preventing atrocities such as this in the future
is imperative."
Likewise, the Colorado General Assembly's 2014 resolution unanimously recognized the
Sand Creek Massacre as an unjust killing of peacefully assembled Arapaho and Cheyenne
which reverberates today upon their descendants: "Be It Resolved by the Senate of the
Sixty-ninth General Assembly of the State of Colorado, the House of Representatives
concurring herein: That we, the members of the General Assembly, acknowledge the
devastation caused by the Sand Creek Massacre and seek to raise public awareness about
the tragic event, the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, and events surrounding it."
The University of Denver's report on the role of its founder, John Evans, assigns culpability
for the Sand Creek Massacre to Territorial Gov. Evans, who also held the office of
Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Colorado Territory: "While not of the same character,
Evans' culpability is comparable in degree to that of Colonel John Chivington, the military
commander who personally planned and carried out the massacre. Evans' actions and
influence, more than those of any other political official in Colorado Territory, created the
conditions in which the massacre was highly likely."
The Sand Creek Massacre provoked a general uprising by the Plains tribes that resulted in
the removal of the Cheyenne and Arapaho from Colorado Territory under the 1865 Little
Arkansas Treaty and the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty.
The 1865 treaty contains an explicit admission that the Arapaho and Cheyenne massacred at
Sand Creek were at peace while under the protection of the U.S. flag: "The United States
being desirous to express its condemnation of, and, as far as may be, repudiate the gross
and wanton out-rages perpetrated against certain bands of Cheyenne and Arrapahoe
Indians, on the twenty-ninth day of November, A.D. 1864, at Sand Creek, in Colorado
Territory, while the said Indians were at peace with the United States, and under its flag,
whose protection they had by lawful authority been promised and induced to seek, and the
Government being desirous to make some suitable reparation for the injuries then done ... ."
In the scant 14 years from 1851 to 1865, the Arapaho and Cheyenne were deprived of their
homelands lying between the North Platte River and the Arkansas River, which were then
opened up to homesteading. Eventually, homestead entries in Colorado as a whole totaled
107,618 and covered 22.1 million acres of land.
Only Montana and North Dakota experienced more entries, according to Carl Ubbelohde,
et.al., in "A Colorado History" (WestWinds Press, 1972).
Colorado's 2014 commemoration of the Sand Creek Massacre admits this manifest injustice.
Gregory Hobbs is a justice on the Colorado Supreme Court.